Ukraine defiant on the 4th anniversary of Russia's invasion

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0:30to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jonat Jalil and at 16 hours GMT on Tuesday the 24th of February, these are our main stories. As Ukrainians mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, President Zelensky delivers a defiant address. Western leaders visit Kyiv to show their support. Reports say senior figures in the US military are deeply concerned that President Trump may start another long-drawn-out conflict in the Middle East. And China imposes restrictions on dual-use exports to 20 major Japanese companies.

1:22Also in this podcast, the first baby born in Britain to a mother who received a womb transplant from a dead donor. I received that phone call and we ultimately then had to go to Oxford and have the transplant. Following that, then of course embryo transfer and I'm still a little boy.

1:44Ukrainians are marking the fourth anniversary of what has become Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, in ceremonies in Kyiv and across the country.

2:02Fierce Ukrainian resistance and hundreds of billions of dollars in Western military aid have prevented Russia from achieving what it thought would be an easy victory. This is how the start of the invasion was reported on the BBC. Russia has launched a large-scale military assault on the country. Ukrainian politicians are describing it as an invasion. Explosions have been heard across Ukraine in cities including the capital, Kiev. In the last hour... Ukraine can fight, and we will fight. Our parliament had an extraordinary meeting. We provided a martial law in Ukraine, and we will fight for our land.

2:43That is our country, and we will definitely win. In an address to mark the anniversary, the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, vowed that his country would never yield to Russian aggression.

2:58Today marks exactly four years since Putin took Kiev in three days. And that really says a lot about our resistance, about how Ukraine has been fighting all this time. Behind these words are millions of our people. Behind these words are great courage, very hard work, endurance, and the long road that Ukraine has been travelling since 24th of February. In those four years, hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. A correspondent, Paul Adams, is in a place of great significance for Ukrainians. This is Butcher. Listeners may recall in the immediate weeks after the full-scale invasion that this is where Russian troops came.

3:47They landed at an airbase nearby four years ago today. They occupied this town for a few weeks before they were repulsed by the Ukrainian military. And in the immediate aftermath of that, the world was horrified to see images of civilians who were shot and their bodies left in the street, and then the uncovering of a mass grave just a few weeks later. No one quite knows how many people were killed here, but it was probably many hundreds. I'm at a cemetery just on the edge of Butcher where people have come this morning to commemorate the soldiers who died, both in those few weeks, but also in the four long years since.

4:30And as I walk up and down the row of headstones here, each one with a face of a soldier, I can see, you know, dates from 2022 onwards. And there are many, many places like this. You are constantly struck by the sheer human cost of what has happened here over the last four years. And, Paul, we heard President Zelensky say that this is the fourth anniversary of the Russian president taking Kiev in three days. Those words are a reminder of how Ukraine, despite all its suffering, has defied the odds. Yes, it has. I mean, who would have thought it? There was an assessment that the country would fall, that Kiev would fall within a matter of days, the government of President Zelensky would be removed, and it would all be over.

5:17Of course, President Zelensky famously decided to stay. He said what he needed was ammunition, not a ride out of town. and the country rallied around him and around their own sense of identity. And they have continued to fight ever since. They have found it difficult, always believing that they were not getting quite enough support from their Western allies. But the fight continues. Russia's progress in the east is glacial. Of course, Ukrainians right across the country continue to experience the drones and missiles that Russia fires and has fired throughout the winter in an attempt to turn the lights off and plunge people into the darkness and the cold.

5:57We're emerging from that winter now. And once again, Ukrainians feel that they have weathered the storm. But under President Trump, that ammunition is getting harder for Ukraine to obtain. How long can this war go on for realistically, given the US pressure on President Zelensky to agree to a deal with Russia? Well, yes, there is definitely American pressure. And it seems to be driven in part by a sense that the White House wants this to be dealt with before the run up to the midterm elections later this year. But despite that, the flow of weapons remains what it has been all along. The Ukrainians will tell you it's not enough and it doesn't arrive quickly enough, but it enables the Ukrainians to stay in the fight.

6:38But this obviously all lends urgency to the peace talks, which are continuing. But as one Ukrainian negotiator put it to me just a couple of days ago, what's missing is a political decision and a phone call from the Kremlin, from Vladimir Putin, saying enough is enough. Paul Adams in Butcher. Well, in a show of support, senior European leaders and officials have come to Kiev where they praise the Ukrainians' resistance. In a video call, the British Prime Minister, Kyrstama, promised to stand by the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes. Whatever Putin tells himself and his people, Russia is not winning.

7:16And we must shift the narrative into that place with greater force and determination. And just to underscore that point, in the last year, Russia has suffered half a million casualties to gain and occupy less than 1 % extra of Ukrainian territory. That is not a country that four years into a conflict is winning. With more on the visits and pledges of support by Ukraine's Western allies, here's our correspondent in Kyiv, Abdujalil Abdurastulov. A number of European leaders have arrived. And at the meeting of the Coalition of Willing, there were a number of speeches reiterating support for Ukraine and reiterating specific pledges that they made in the past.

8:06Kirshan mentioned about the importance of air defense systems for Ukraine, because Ukrainian cities have been hammered by Russian airstrikes recently, and mostly they were targeting energy facilities and power plants and substations, and therefore there's a massive energy crisis now in Ukraine because of these attacks. Earlier, President Zelensky just complained that their Patriot systems simply had no missiles to intercept those Russian ballistic weapons. And therefore, Ukraine says that they need more interceptors in order to stop those attacks. And until President Trump came to power, it was the US that was the biggest backer in Ukraine's war against Russia.

8:50So it's striking, but perhaps not surprising that no senior official from the Trump administration is there in Kiev today. Yes, it has been already raised by journalists asking the President's press office whether anybody from the U.S. will be attending and what it means to the fact that they are not in Kiev. They haven't given any specific response to this question. However, Kiev maintains the position that U.S. is crucial to achieve a peace deal. And the U.S. is involved directly in the peace talks. And therefore, Kiev says that without the U.S. support, without the pressure that the U.S. can apply, it will be incredibly hard to achieve a peace deal.

9:38But there have also been complaints in Ukraine that the U.S. is supplying more pressure on Kiev than it is on Moscow. Kyiv is now trying to be very diplomatic. They don't directly criticize President Trump or his administration because they already had a very negative experience back in the US when there was a span between President Zelensky and President Trump. And therefore, they learned the lesson that in order to win over, they cannot antagonize President Trump by criticizing his actions. And therefore, by choosing carefully the words, by saying praises to President Trump for all these actions, Ukraine hopes that President Trump can be convinced to provide greater support for Ukraine.

10:25Abdujaleel Abdurasulov in Kiev. Well, on this fourth anniversary, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, admitted that the war in Ukraine had changed Russia and that President Putin had not reached all his goals in what he's still calling a special military operation. Yes, it is true. All the goals of the special military operation have not yet been achieved. Many goals have already been reached, but the main one to ensure security for people who lived and continue to live in eastern and southern Ukraine and who were in fatal danger has not been achieved. So yes, not all the goals have been reached yet, which is why the special military operation continues.

11:10Western officials say that over the past three months, Russia has lost more troops than it's been able to recruit. And over the past four years, it's estimated that well over a million Russian troops have been killed or wounded. Staggering losses, even for a country as big as Russia. Few people there have dared to speak out publicly against the conflict after the initial protests were crushed. But over the past year, four Russian soldiers have worked in secret with the BBC for a documentary called The Zero Line Inside Russia's War. Here's an interview with one of them, a former Russian army medical officer called Dima.

11:48Anna Foster asked him how he ended up serving in the Russian army. They tell me if I don't go to the army, I will go to the jail. It's very simple in Russia. It's very simple. When you joined the fighting, what about the other soldiers? Did they feel the same way as you? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But too many people, too many people like me, nobody really understands we are fighting for what, with who, for who, just for Putin, you know, not for motherland. You didn't want to be involved in what's known as a meat storm. It's a word that some people might not have heard before. What did it mean to you?

12:31It's assault. Without artillery, without support from commanders, it's one-way assault. But 5 % of people can stay on enemy territory and it begins again and again and again. This is how rationally we take territory. And you didn't want to do that? And you wouldn't tell your men to do that either? I have medals for medicine. I have medicine experience. And I will be an officer. That's why I can say to them, I don't do this. I can do something different. But it's about me. Because just a regular soldier can't. Because if he's declined the order, he will die in the next few minutes. he will be shot, he will be dead.

13:28The commander will just kill him. You saw, in some cases, when people said no, they were shot or they had their cash cards taken away from them. And you thought that was just happening where you were, but it was happening more widely to other soldiers in the Russian army. How does that make you feel about the country that you were fighting for? What I feel about my country now, I think Russia is not Russia anymore. Dima, a former Russian army medical officer. For the first time here in the UK, a baby has been born to a mother who received a womb transplant from a dead donor. The boy is called Hugo.

14:11His mother, Grace Bell, says that after years of believing that she would never have a baby, Hugo was simply a miracle. It's been a long journey, if I'm honest. Now, 16 years ago, I was told that I could never carry my own baby. And that was final. There was nothing in the world that could have solved that. I was diagnosed with something called MRKH syndrome, which meant my uterus was in two halves. So all this time, it was always surrogacy or adoption. Me and Steve actually decided to go down, initially down the route of them surrogacy. We created our own embryos. And then I got the phone call from Queen Transplant UK.

14:52And that was just such an unbelievable moment for me to get that phone call. I got put on the waiting list because, of course, I have a deceased donor. We were waiting for a donor, a match with myself. And then one June day, I received that phone call. And we ultimately then had to go to Oxford and have the transplant. and following that then of course embryo transfer and that's a little boy. Womb transplants normally come from close relatives who've already had their own families or from deceased donors. More than 100 have been performed around the world with more than 70 healthy babies born as a result.

15:35Isabel Kiaroga is a consultant surgeon and she carried out Grace Bell's womb transplant. Anna Foster asked her why when heart and kidney transplants are so common, there are still relatively few womb transplants. So with uterus transplant is not a life-saving operation, but it is a life-creating operation. It was in 2014 when the first transplant was done, uterus transplant was done successfully in Sweden. So it does take a very, very long time for everything to fall into place, for the research to be done safely and to translate it onto the human setting. And how complex is it as a procedure?

16:19Oh, unfortunately, I remember some years ago talking to the Swedish surgeons and they said, oh, you know, it's like a kidney transplant, like a living donor kidney transplant. Well, there's nothing like it. The vessels are extremely small, very, very small, and it's very delicate and sensitive operation. so it's just about connecting the vessels so the organ gets the blood supply from the recipient and then my colleague Professor Smith does the gynecological bit that joined in the vagina. Yeah and obviously the pregnancy when it happens has to be monitored very carefully. What are some of the complications of a pregnancy in a donated womb?

17:04Well yes this is a high-risk pregnancy Of course, they are immunosuppressed. We manage the immune system and they could develop any infections. This is the same for any other transplant. But of course, we don't, especially with this transplant, we don't want to let the baby be born naturally. So they have to be born by cesarean section. So the pregnancy has to be very, very closely managed. Surgeon Isabel Kiaroga. Still to come in this podcast, Florence prepares to restore one of its most famous landmarks, Giotto's Bell Tower. A specially designed scaffolding system will be installed and lowered section by section as work progresses, so restored areas can be revealed while the tower remains open to visitors.

18:07I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's upset web every week for my show, Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

18:43President Trump called it an armada whose might would bring Iran to the negotiating table. The US military buildup in recent weeks in the Middle East is the largest since the one that preceded the war in Iraq more than 20 years ago. But given the disastrous outcome of that war and Iran's refusal to make any real concessions to the Trump administration, senior figures in the US military are reported to be deeply concerned that Mr. Trump might start another long-drawn-out conflict in the Middle East. Our North America correspondent Anthony Zerka explained to Nick Robinson what's been going on. General Dan Cain, it was reported in the Washington Post recently, had expressed behind closed doors concerns about the dangers that would be presented towards American forces if they engage in a long-duration military operation directed towards Iran.

19:41He was particularly concerned, according to this report, about American munitions running low, the munitions, the kinds of munitions, Patriot missiles, THAAD missiles, that are used to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles. And therefore, it could become, if this takes time, if this is drawn out, it could lower the Americans' defenses against the kind of missiles that Iran might launch in retaliation. Now, Donald Trump himself has come out and said this is false reporting, that Dan Cain is in favor, or at least not opposed to a war with Iran, that he's providing his counsel, but that both Dan Cain and the president don't want this to become a military operation, but they're prepared to do it if Iranians don't negotiate on their ballistic missile program and their nuclear program.

20:33That council appears to be focused on the sheer scale of Iran and the power of its military to inflict damage, not just on U.S. forces in the region, but on allies in the region too. And that was one of his concerns that he expressed according to this report, that allies would not cooperate with the United States. that Arab nations in particular would not allow the bases in the region to be used by American forces to launch strikes, that they wouldn't have overflight rights to go over the territory of these Arab nations, making it more difficult to strike into Iran. And you have to remember, Iran is three times the size of Iraq.

21:12It's a much bigger nation. The targets that this is an extended campaign are spread out across the country. They're more difficult to find. The ballistic missile program would be difficult to totally demolish in a short-term operation similar to the one that the United States had during the Iran-Israel war last year, where it was a one-and-done strike on a nuclear facility. This, it appears, by all indications, would be a much larger, wide-ranging operation. And what does that mean for opinion within the MAGA movement, which we know divides between a kind of J.D. Vance view of not getting over entangled and someone like H.R.

21:56McMaster, who we heard on the program the other day, saying there was a price to doing nothing in Iran. It was better that the president acted. It's interesting. Last year, before the operation that I mentioned striking the nuclear facilities, there was pretty significant opposition or at least opposition voiced by the MAGA movement, by key members of Donald Trump's coalition, opposition to any kind of military operation targeting Iran. to the point where there were stories and reports about divisions within the White House and within the movement writ large. This time around, there doesn't seem to be the same level of opposition.

22:38And it may be because after those strikes last year, it was a one and done, a one off sort of operation. And the concerns that they had at the time of the United States getting bogged down into another protracted military campaign in the Middle East were allayed. Now, whether this is going to be the same sort of thing, it remains to be seen, but at least the voices within the MAGA movement don't seem to have those kind of concerns. Anthony Zirka. But the standoff with Iran is not Mr. Trump's only worry. His tariffs were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court last week. To try to get around this, the Trump administration has brought in a new flat rate tariff of 10 % on global imports.

23:23Mr Trump has threatened to raise the new import tax even further, to 15%, but has not yet done so amid concerns that US allies would be hit the hardest. Theo Leggett reports. Uncertainty, confusion, even chaos. These are the terms being widely used to describe the impact of the latest trade decisions from the White House. Today, the United States introduced a new 10 % tariff or tax on imports from around the world. That was lower than the 15 % rate promised by President Trump on Saturday, in response to a Supreme Court ruling that declared a significant part of his existing trade agenda illegal.

24:02Analysts said businesses would be relieved that the new rate wasn't higher, but warned that the situation could change at any time.

24:21every weekday. China has imposed restrictions on dual-use exports to major Japanese industrial companies, accusing them of helping to build up Japan's military capabilities. Components which have a civilian application but can also be used in military equipment will either be blocked from sale or require specific clearance for export. It's the latest escalation in a row that was triggered last year when the Japanese Prime Minister angered China by saying that Tokyo could use its military to defend Taiwan against attack. More from Stephen McDonnell in Beijing. Japanese industrial giants, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Subaru and the country's space agency, have had restrictions imposed on what products they can import from China.

25:06Beijing has accused Japan of remilitarising and now the country's commerce ministry has released a list of 20 Japanese entities which are blocked from buying so-called dual-use technologies from China. Details of the specific products have not been released. A further 20 Japanese entities have been put on a watch list and exporting dual-use items to them requires clearance. The Chinese government said the measures would not hurt normal trade with Japan. Stephen McDonnell. Mexico, under pressure from the Trump administration to act against drug gangs, took decisive action over the weekend, arresting the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel.

25:48In the shootout, the drug lord known as El Mencho was wounded and later died. In response, his gang unleashed a wave of violence across the country, especially in the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco State. Guadalajara is also due to be a host city for the FIFA World Cup in four months' time. Anne Soy asked the sports journalist John Arnold, who covers football in Mexico and the US, how big a concern security is in Mexico. I think it's a huge concern. For decades now, Mexico has been waging war on organized crime, the cartels. But I think that day to day people feel that, but maybe it doesn't come into things like football that often.

26:32We've had some incidents where you have had these moments. There have been matches, not frequently, but there was an incident of a match where the shooting took place outside and the match was cancelled because players ran off the field and people left the stadium in fear. So it does happen, but it kind of rarely touches the kind of football world. But yeah, I mean, insecurity in Mexico, it is a problem. It is real and people are dealing with it every day. And the current outbreak is rather severe. Do you think this was a consideration, the security in Mexico? Was it a consideration before it was considered as a host nation?

27:08Yeah, I definitely think that FIFA, when they were going through the host nation process, thought about kind of the security situation in Mexico. You know, I would say that all three of the host nations kind of bring their own quirks and concerns. Canada, maybe less so, but obviously the recent immigration enforcement push in the United States and the violence that ISIS caused has been a concern for many people, especially for an event that's supposed to welcome the world. And in Mexico, I think that security was always kind of the big question mark. Infrastructure was up there too. When I've been traveling in the Mexican host cities, a lot of people talked to me about the traffic that's going to be caused, a lack of public transportation systems, not completely, but lack of public transportation to the stadium or from the airport to the main part of the city, for example.